Sexuality In Brazil Essay

The terms gender and sexuality are usually mistaken for one or the other. Gender refers to the social term that is given to a specific sex. Gender is typically considered female or male. The term sexuality refers to people’s sexual interest or desires to other people. Different types of sexuality are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, and other types. Gender and sexuality are used for people to identify their sexuality, communication with others, and learn how to find a community of people that are alike.

For example, gender differences in Brazil are based on differences of people’s sexuality rather than their biological sex. There is a sexual and gender division between the transgendered prostitutes and their clients. It is considered

Transgendered prostitutes incorporate female attributes to their image because they feel feminine not because they want to become a woman. Transgendered prostitutes in Brazil identify as female because “…females and males who enjoy being penetrated belong to the same classificatory category” (Kulick 1997). This means that the travesties are not women but share the gender with them. In Brazil, it appears that gender is categories as men and not-men. This is different from the United States since they suggest that “individuals constitute a third, or intermediate, gender…” (Kulick 1997). Sexuality is also shaped by the relations to power. However, in Mexico, both sexuality and gender are both based on religious power. Both women that were interviewed in the article lived in a home where Catholicism was practiced and had to conform to its expectations. Catholics believe that women have to guard their virginity until marriage and degrade homosexuality. The women from the article had to deal with these views and hiding their sexuality from people around them. They had to illustrate a traditional expectation

The transgendered youth has had difficulties with meeting people in the outside world of the internet. Sci:dentity is an exposition that gave transgendered youth a space to be comfortable from their everyday lives. This was a place where people could explore to understand and identify themselves however they felt was right. According to the article, “sixteen of the eighteen participants had never met another trans person in “real life” before coming along to the workshops” (Rooker 2010). Most participants had met people in online spaces which offered them support and information that they may have questions about. People in rural areas are also using online spaces to become part of the community. The internet has become an outlet to learn and to reach out to people who are have the same interests. In rural areas, there are “material dependencies on structures of familiarity and the value placed on conformity as a sign of solidarity intensify the visibility of compulsory heterosexuality’s hegemonic sexual and gender norms” (Gray, 2009). These ideas make people create relationships with an exterior community that may understand what it feels like to come out in a place where conformity and certain gender norms are the only ideas people believe in.

Gender and sexuality are terms that people use when talking about their desires and to communicate